103 Resources For Becoming a Pinterest Expert

Forget Linsanity, there’s now Pinsanity on the internet. Astounding growth has led to wide media coverage and tons of articles, blogs and videos about this new social network (or social web). Some say that it’s tapped into what other social networks have done so well: getting people to share and communicate, while also helping them discover, instead of search. Techies call it a Delicious for photos. Whatever you want to call it, it’s been on the rise quickly.

If you’re hungry for learning and becoming more knowledgeable about Pinterest, then this slew of articles can help. Here are 103 articles to guide your way through Pinterest, as well as some similar spin-offs. Included at the end of each section are some key takeaways that I’ve found from reading these articles.

And now for a quick synopsis and an occasional excerpt from numerous articles.

Background and Basics on Pinterest:

1. 13 Fun Facts About Pinterest Users [Infographic] – An infographic that shares some data behind the people using Pinterest. One surprising statistics: Almost 16 minutes spent on site per user & their strong growth of employees; about a 180% increase in one year.

22. How did Pinterest gain initial traction? – The top answer says that the main reasons behind Pinterest’s initial traction are: It has attracted the design community and has built in mechanisms to help it spread further, a focus on community & having quality content.

29. Why We’re All Suddenly Obsessed With Pinterest – Fast Company gives three reasons why Pinterest is a success: it’s based on social relevance, it’s visual story telling & it’s been getting a lot of inbound and outbound traffic.

What you can take away from growth articles:

Pinterest is growing quickly due to its virality. Part of the reason for its growth is also because of the fact that people get to look instead of read. It’s more visually appealing than a site that’s chock full of text.

How-To Articles on Pinterest:

30. 4 Unique Ways to Use Pinterest – This article gives the reader examples as to how to use Pinterest. Whether you’re a small or large business, in need of home improvement help, or a blogger looking to spread your content.

39. Stay Safe on Pinterest – Read Write Web columnist Alicia Eler says there are three areas where you should keep an eye on to help protect your security and privacy- Pinterest Settings, Facebook-Pinterest authorization and Twitter-Pinterest authorization. She analyzes all three, giving you tips to increase and become better aware of the privacy on Pinterest.

What you can take away from how-to articles:

At the time of this posting, Pinterest is an invite only site. It’s not hard to get an invite, though. Simply request one (right on their homepage) and you’ll likely receive an email within a few days with an invitation. After that, it’s important to engage and follow the people with the same interests that you have. Pin interesting images and don’t spam.

Lessons to Learn From Pinterest:

42. Lessons from Path and Pinterest – A few lessons that an entrepreneur can learn from other company slip ups. The main objective is to be transparent with your consumers and don’t take them for granted.

47. Why Pinterest Is So Addictive – It’s in people’s nature to collect things. Pinterest helps you do that and share it your collections with like-minded individuals.

What you can take away from lessons to learned articles:

If you’re in the curation business, tap into one of the core human needs: communication with others. Help people do this and find others with the same interests. Also take into consideration that there are many opinions from very respectable people who say that trends are shifting from searching to discovering things.

53. 5 Ways Brands Can Leverage Pinterest – “The Pinterest frenzy provides marketers with an opportunity to leverage its compelling visual nature and weave it into a cohesive social experience within a brand’s Facebook community.”

67. Tips & Tricks to Drive Targeted Traffic – Take into consideration the fact that Pinterest is a much better referrer for traffic than Google+. With all the money that Google has invested in their social network, Pinterest is much more successful. This article covers Pinterest marketing and two things that can kill your brand: “First, don’t watermark or brand your images. People will recommend this – don’t do it. Second, don’t use a price tag banner. Again, it just doesn’t work.”

What you can take way from marketing articles:

Use Pinterest if you think it can help your business. There are already a number of reputable, well established brands that have a presence on Pinterest. But don’t force your way in because “everyone else is doing it”. Don’t spam the place or you and your brand will quickly get a bad reputation. Pin interesting things and follow people who are interested in the same things you are. Keep in mind that Pinterest is visual. If you’re going to pin boring pictures just to promote yourself, you’ll likely to do more harm than good. It’s important to reiterate that the difference between adding actual value and spamming. Etsy is often mentioned as a brand using Pinterest the correct way. Bottom line that you need to know: Promote a lifestyle, engage & don’t just advertise your own brand.

84. Pinterest Rate of Referral Now Close to Twitter, Google+ – “In the study, Shareaholic aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach 260 million unique monthly visitors. It found that Pinterest grew from 2.5 percent of referral traffic in December to 3.6 percent of the referrals in January.

Just six months ago, Pinterest had only 0.17 percent of the referral traffic. Now it’s leagues ahead of Google+, MySpace, Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn, which is something for a site that’s still invite-only. In fact, it’s practically tied with Twitter and Google, which have 3.61 percent and 3.62 percent respectively.”

What you can take away from similar sites:

Many of these sites are trying to solve a problem–there’s no Pinterest for men. Go on Pinterest at any time and you’ll likely see a lot of women pinning things that other females would appreciate. Gentlemint, Manteresting, Where is the cool and others are trying to emerge as the leader of Pinterest for men on the coattails of Pinterest.

98. Chris Brogan on Using Pinterest for Business [Video] – “This is now outperforming Bing and Yahoo as search reference to her site”. Chris gives an example of how a business has already gotten success from Pinterest & explains how a business can use it. An interesting quote “I asked my mom ‘how do you buy thoughtful gifts’ and she said ‘you listen all year long’….so start keeping a pin of everything [you] think would be interesting to buy for people.”

100. Should A Small Business Be Pinning On Pinterest? – “Pinterest is very much centered on one word: beauty. Beauty for an avid pinner goes beyond just pretty photos though- there is beauty all in the details of Pinterest. In the simplicity of both establishing an account and the site’s general clean layout design.”

“Use Pinterest as a boost but don’t make it integral to your entire business. By creating and curating a Pinterest account, chances are pretty high that you have a product you are selling and that it appeals to a wide audience, specifically women and creative types.”

102. Why Small Businesses Cannot Overlook Pinterest – “Just creating a page and hoping people will find it probably isn’t going to cut it so take some time to develop a goals-based strategy that addresses the same tried and true questions: what’s your market, who’re your customers, and how can you excite their interest?”

103. Bessemer Ventures: Why We Invested In Pinterest – Jeremy Levine explains why he invested in Pinterest’s series A round. Levine says that one of the reasons Pinterest is a success is because it has tapped a core need of humans, the need to communicate with others.

What you can take away from small businesses and Pinterest:

Don’t go into Pinterest if it isn’t right for your company. Do some research first, and then create a strategy.

Have you found any good reads on Pinterest? Share them in the comment below!

About the Author: Zach Bulygo is a guest blogger for KISSmetrics, you can find him on Twitter here. You can also follow him on Google+.

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Thanks so much for listing 3dcart’s blog post as number 71.
We also have a one more post that readers may find helpful:
Pinterest 101: What Merchants Need To Know!
blog.3dcart.com/pinterest-101-what-merchants-need-to-know/

Really a great compilation of Pinterest resources. I’ve still to read most of them in next days.

A funny thing: I want to “pin” this article via firefox-pin-button to my social media board, and I can’t because this post doesn’t have any picture to do it….
As it’s recommended by several people, if you talk about Pinterest, put at least a good image to be there ;)

Pinterest is the new Flickr without the limits. Flickr charges a yearly fee if you have too many images. But it also replaces Google Image search because it allows repinning and likes and comments and storing them on your own page. If you like image and niche photo searches; it will become more popular than Facebook and Flickr.